Tag: 19861998

Page Kennedy has done a lot with his career in a short amount of time. Page started his acting career on stage and quickly moved on to television and movies along big name actors like Samuel L. Jackson and Collin Farrell. Movie Mikes’ Adam Lawton caught with Page to talk about his character Radon Randell from the Spike TV’s “Blue Mountain State”.

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Adam Lawton: You have quit an extensive acting background and have been on quit a few different television shows, but how did the role for “Blue Mountain State” come about?
Page Kennedy: “Blue Mountain State” came at a difficult time in my life. It was a role that I thought was a long shot for me to play. So I went in there kind of pessimistic about it but prepared and I gave them what I thought this character was. I thought I knew this character. I just didn’t think I looked like him, but again I gave them what I thought this character was and apparently they thought so too.

AL: I think it takes guts to go out there in an American flag Speedo.
PK: Yeah it does a little bit. It takes guts.

AL: Can you tell us a little bit about who your character Radon Randell is on the show?
PK: Radon is a cat from Detroit who has always been the best everywhere he went, but you know he’s from Detroit so his life circumstances are a little different. He is able to get away with a lot of stuff that he does, since he’s an awesome football player. They let him do whatever he wanted to do. It comes to happen that he chooses to go to Blue Mountain State after receiving all these offers from other schools. He’s bringing Detroit to this school along with all his antics and his awesomeness on the football field. So you have to deal with an extra arrogant, crazy, and wild personality.

AL: Did the cast, who were part the first season, give you any type of hazing with you being the new guy on set?
PK: I didn’t really get hazed much. I fitted right in because my personality is as big and crazy as theirs are. It felt like I was never the new guy because I just gelled so well with them immediately.

AL: Did you have any previous football experience prior to the show?
PK: I played a football character once before on the show “Six Feet Under”, which is ironic because that was the first time I was on TV. Here I am again playing a football character. I also played for my division 1 college, so I had some experience.

AL: You were in the movie “S.W.A.T.” with Collin Farrell and Samuel L. Jackson, can you tell us a little about that experience?
PK: I was relatively new to the movie game as that was only my second movie. It was surreal. I remember one time we had rehearsal for the 6th St. Bridge scene. It was a closed rehearsal, which was the first time for me being a part of a closed rehearsal.  They put me in a van with Samuel L. Jackson, Collin Farrell, LL Cool L and Michelle Rodriguez. All I kept thinking to myself was I made it. I’m sitting in a van going to rehearsals with movie stars, I made it. I worked on that movie a long time, so I got to be close with Olivia Martinez and Collin Farrell and really everyone. It was a fun time.

AL: Can you tell me about the time you snuck into Sony Studio?
PK: Oh ya, well I had just gotten to LA from graduate school and was sleeping on a friend’s couch. I had done a Shakespeare festival the summer before and one of the actors lived in LA and told me about the audition. I didn’t have a car. I didn’t have an agent. I didn’t have anything but a head shot and a dream. So I was like, “How am I going to get to this audition?” and “how am I actually going to audition?”  I had never actually had an audition in LA. So I had a friend take me to Sony Studios and I told them I was a courier making a delivery to the casting director which I was…I was delivering myself! This was pre-9/11, so they let me in. I got there and I said “Hey I’m here let’s do this!” They were like “We are not even auditioning yet and are you representing yourself?”  I said “Sure am” and they basically kicked me out. About a week later, the actual casting director saw that I had like twenty theater credits on my resume and they called me in for an actual audition. I nailed that and then they called me again and I nailed it again. Then they wanted me to test for the network at which time I thought I had the part (laughs) but I didn’t. So I went back to an agent, who had previously turned down my offer to represent me, and I asked that they negotiate my deal. They said “Sure”, not really thinking anything would come of it. But then CBS called them and asked if they knew a Page Kennedy and they were like “Yes why? What did he do?” And the person calling said that they wanted me to network test for CBS. And they still represent me today.

AL: Do you have any other projects coming up that you would like our readers to know about?
PK: Well I’m a rapper and I do music. I have a song that will be played on one of the upcoming episodes of “Blue Mountain State”. I have a mix tape that’s out on my website www.pagekennedy.com called “The Chronicles of U-Turn” which was based off my character on “Weeds”. I’m heavily on twitter @PageKennedy, where you can hear some of my jokes, as well as compete against me daily at 9:30 PST on “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader”.

AL: I would like to see a Radon soundboard app, which featured all his catch phrases.
PK: (Laughs) that would be dope.

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Colin & Greg Strause have worked on many high profile films under their company Hydraulx. Some of them range from “The Day After Tomorrow” to “300” to “2012” to “Avatar”. Together they have only previously directed one film, “AVPR: Aliens vs Predator – Requiem” back in 2007. They decided to create their latest film “Skyline”, completely independent from studios in order to make it under their own terms. “Skyline” looks like $100 million movie but was shot for less than $1 million dollars, according to the brothers.  Movie Mikes got a chance to chat with the brothers about “Skyline” and how they got it made in under a year.

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Mike Gencarelli: How did Hydraulx originally come about?
Greg Strause: Hydraulx came to be in 2002.  Colin and I moved to LA in 1995 and had another company called Pixel Envy with some partners.  We couldn’t all get along, so we split that up.  Colin and I decided to just go at it on our own and do it just the two of us, that is when Hydraulx came to be.  We started off pretty small, it was like ten guys in an apartment in Santa Monica.  It has grown now into a big office with like a hundred and twenty people.  It has turned into this little monster.

MG: Tell us why you decided to make “Skyline” completely independent from studios?
GS: There were a few things, we thought a lot of things could have gone better on “AVPR”.  In the three years that has gone by since it came out, we have been developing scripts.  We were meeting with producers and trying to get things going at other studios.  It is a very frustrating process of trying to get a movie off the ground.  If we had an idea that we thought was cool, a person at the studio would say “If there was a comic book that sold 250 copies of it, then I could show my boss”.  Colin and I thought that was absolutely ridiculous.  That is honestly the dumbest thing I have ever heard.  I have to make a comic book in order to get a movie made?  That is really lame that you can’t show your boss unless it is based on an existing property.
Colin Strause: It doesn’t even matter if the existing property only sold like ten copies either.
GS: Yeah, it is such a studio mentality that everyone is just trying to protect their jobs.  It is very difficult to get original sci-fi and stuff like that off the ground.  You have to take a risk, like what we did by just financing your own film.  We did it independently, just rolled the dice and see what happens.

MG: How were you able to complete “Skyline” from script to screen in under a year?
CS: It was like 11 and a half months. It was insane.
GS: I think the important thing is that we had our writers, Liam (O’ Donnell) and Josh (Cordes) and they stayed on it until the last day it was delivered.
CS: We had a strong outline and that was real key.  You can spend years on the development process and writing the script.  Just because you spent three years on it doesn’t mean the script is going to be any better than if you spent two months on it.  Sometimes you get these ideas that sounds great in a room and once they are implemented you say “Oh my God, it got worse”.  That is why things get stuck in development hell.  We had a very detailed outline written out right off the bat.  From that outline Josh and Liam stuck to it when they wrote the script.  That aloud the script to get finished in what is considered a short order from what the business is used to.

MG: “Skyline” was shot on a low budget, what was the hardest part of making it looking like a $100 million dollar movie?
GS: The first thing was getting everyone on board in the beginning and making them believe we could pull this off.  They would read the script and it reads big.  Colin and I said told them we can do this for $10 million. The physical live action budget was only a million bucks.
CS: Yeah, it was like $980,000.
GS: The agents and managers were flipping.  They thought we were smoking crack.  That is them though doing their job, it didn’t make sense.  You have this script it reads really big.  So convincing people we weren’t smoking crack was one of the hard parts.  The other part was after we finished shooting, we were cutting the movie this past summer and Universal tells us they want to release the movie on November 12th.  So probably the hardest thing really was getting it done in that amount of time.

MG: How does working on visual effects for “Skyline” differ from you working on a film like “Avatar”?
GS: The actual process is very similar.  Again, the time compression on “Skyline” was rough.
CS: We had to do a thousand FX shots in just under four months which is insane.  It is the most shots Hydraulx has ever done on a movie.  The actual process, the software and the way things are put together, is identical to how we did stuff on “Avatar”.
GS: The biggest difference is that since we were our own client, we were  able to eliminate a significant amount of bureaucracy between supervisors, director, producers and the studios.  There are all these levels of people that need to sign off on things.  As directors, we are also visual effects supervisors, we knew what we were going to do from day one.  We just stuck to the plan.  Usually what happens on movies, they are trying to race through pre-production.  They do not always work out the visual effects until after the movie is shot.  They are like “Ok, now let’s get into it afterwards.  We knew this wasn’t going to be a two year process, so we didn’t have that luxury.  We had to come up with our plan up front, stick to our guns and ride it out.
CS: It is a different way of doing movies and that is how we pulled it off.  I do not think that anyone else could have ever done it the way we did.

MG: When I watching the film, I thought to myself you guys probably had this all planned out.  It felt very well thought out, like the visual effect were already there when it is was shot.
GS: One of our camera operators on the movie was Josh Cordes, who is also one of the writers.  Having your writer be your camera guy really helps.  You have someone who knows why the camera is being pointed somewhere.  That is a huge positive in trying to streamline the process.

MG: What has been the most difficult film that you have worked on?
GS: This film definitely ranks up there for me and probably another would be…
CS: “2012”, it was huge.
GS: Yeah it was, but I think it might be “The Day After Tomorrow” actually.  We came in after another company had a problem on the movie.  We only had a couple of months to do, what this other company had a year to work on.  “Skyline” definitely takes the cake though overall in that realm.
CS: We were also wearing a lot of hats in “Skyline”.  It is our first movie as producers as well.  You have involvement of making sure it doesn’t go over budget.  We had to get it done on time.  We were dealing with the marketing materials.  The color grading and final assembly of the film was done at Hydraulx.  It was the first movie we have ever done that on.  We were learning all the ins and outs of managing the sound department also.  It was a huge undertaking.
GS: Even though it is a small indie.  There is still an incredible amount of man hours that goes into the film.  Staying above all of the departments is a lot of work.  Collin and I were running on pure adrenaline the whole film.

MG: I liked the ending of the movie, I thought it fit well.
GS: It was ballsy.  It is not a studio ending.  We wanted to do something really interesting with the ending.

MG: When was the ending shot? Was it a pick-up shot?
GS: It was literally shot the last day of principal photography.  The whole things was shot in one day on green screen.  It was intense.

MG: Any hints you can give us for what’s to come in “Skyline 2”?
GS: [MINOR SPOILER] We already have a forty page treatment that we did.  I hope people take away when they watch the movie is that “Skyline” is the prequel.  We basically shot what we wanted to do with this trilogy in order.  Normally you do the big movie first, then the sequel, then come back and do the prequel.  With this one we had the story mapped out in what we wanted to do.  Now seeing where the movie ends, it leaves it open for a chance for us to fight back.  We got our asses kicked and we find out first resistance fighter.  I think it takes us to a really cool place for the next one.
CS: It gives us hope for the human race.

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You may not know J. Paul Boehmer’s face but you certainly know his voice. When he’s not appearing on Broadway (he co-starred in Oscar Wilde’s “An Ideal Husband”), he may show up on your television. The confirmed Trekkie first hit the small screen on “Star Trek: Voyager.” He later appeared on both “Deep Space Nine” and “Enterprise,” as well as voiced characters on two “Star Trek” video games. Other roles in shows like “Frasier,” “Lost” and “Nip/Tuck” keep him busy when he’s not at his day job, recording books for both Books on Tape and Listening Library titles. Paul took some time to talk with Movie Mikes about his upcoming film, “Skyline”.

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Mike Gencarelli: Talk about your role as Colin in the upcoming sci-fi feature “Skyline”?
J. Paul Boehmer: Well, basically the plot is “aliens invade Los Angeles.” (laughs) That’s really all you need to know. They wreak a lot of havoc and it’s going to be pretty exciting. I just finished doing some additional dialogue work the other day and what I saw was incredible.

MG: Even though the film would be classified “low budget” I understand it has a big budget feel. Do you agree?
JPB: The main thing about this project is that these guys (co-directors Colin and Greg Strause) know what they’re doing. They’ve been doing special effects for years…they run their own special effects house. They knew what they wanted when they came to the table. They shot it the way they wanted to. And the great thing is, they can make a movie on a really low budget and make it look fantastic. You don’t need to spend the entire national budget of a small country to make a fantastic movie.

MG: What was the hardest part of working on the film?
JPB: For me, it was that I have a very bad end. I was hung from ropes for an entire day and was dropped six feet onto a pad all day long. It was really fun…I loved doing my own stunts. I had a headache at the end of the day but I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to do it again. It was really great.

MG: How was it working with the Strause Brothers?
JPB: They were incredible. They’re so together, they had everything ready to go. It was one of the nicest sets I’ve ever worked on. We actually filmed in one of their apartment buildings and in their parking structure. But let me also say that it wasn’t just any apartment building, it was one on Santa Monica Beach!

MG: You have done some work in the “Star Trek” world, tell us about it and would you consider yourself a “Trekkie”?
JPB: I grew up on “Star Trek.” I used to race home from school every day to see the episodes when they first put them into syndication. And that was the first big syndication “thing.” I grew up on it. I dreamed about it, made my own model ships. I did all the boy things. So to get to be on the show was a huge dream come true for me. And to be on the show as often as I was, and to play the great characters I got to play, was really exciting. I actually played a Nazi SS officer on both “Voyager” and “Enterprise.” For all I know it was the same costume! I have no shame about being a Trekkie. I speak a little Klingon…a little Vulcan…I’ve been known to watch all of the movies over and over.

MG: What else are you working on?
JPB: Nothing at the moment. I’ve had a couple of auditions but nothing back on those yet. I do narrate books on tape for my day job. I have more than 100 titles that I’ve recorded, including “Moby Dick.” I just did a recording of “The Jungle,” as well as Michael Scott’s “Necromancer.

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Norman Reedus is known most for his role of Murphy MacManus in “The Boondock Saints” series. He is currently appearing in AMC’s new TV series “The Walking Dead”, playing the role of Daryl Dixon. The character as described by Norman is “a guy who is ready to break down and kill everyone at any moment”. Movie Mikes had the chance again to talk with Norman about his role in the show and how it differs from his other projects.

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Mike Gencarelli: Tell us about your role of Daryl Dixon in “The Walking Dead”?
Norman Reedus: Daryl is an ex-con that lives alone with his brother. When the apocalypse happens, he fends for himself. He is a hunter. He hunts with a crossbow. He is quite the hot head. He is also efficient in his killing. He is a no-bullshit kind of a kind. My character comes in on the third episode. My brother, who is played by Michael Rooker, is in trouble. I go looking for my brother with the rest of the crew behind me. They do not know whether to trust me and I do not know whether to trust them. I am not too particularly happy with the situation. I come in just like a tornado and just reek havoc. Slowly through all the situations that happen to us while looking for my brother, they find out that I am good guy to have around. I sort of start of a family with these more “normal” type people. In this show the zombie are not the only enemies. The enemy could be the guy standing right next to you. It is this weird see-saw of who you can trust. It makes for super interesting television. It is such an interesting character. I am really exciting to be apart of it. There is a rumor that Robert (Kirkman) might be putting me in the comic book. That would be really fun to see myself drawn in one of Robert’s comic books.

MG: How did you become involved with this project?
NR: I remember reading the pilot. I had never really done the whole pilot season thing in LA. I was reading them all and I said that this was the best pilot. I got to LA late and I originally really liked the Rick Grimes role. They told me that Frank knows my stuff and they wanted me to read for one of the brothers. I went in and actually read Merle Dixon lines in front of Frank. I do not think my character was even written yet. It was just an idea at the time. Next thing I know I am on-board.

MG: Tell us about working with Michael Rooker, who plays your brother in the show?
NR: I remember seeing “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” was back when and I remember thinking this guy is one of my favorite people ever. Michael was such a cool guy and such a blast to work with. He is such a good actor. He brings so much to the table. He is such a force just to be around. As far as Daryl Dixon goes, you have a brother like Merle as your older sibling and you are always trying to live up to your brother.  You are definitely going have some issues. I went into it with a major chip on my character’s shoulder and I think it plays off really nicely.

MG: Your character is not in the comic series, did you find that difficult to prepare?
NR: Frank (Darabont) wrote my part specifically for the show. It is really well written, so I got a good sense of what the character is like from the beginning. As far as being in the comic book, I know some of the other cast members mentioned how easy for was them to see how there character was like from the comic book.  Though none of them wanted to get too far into it though because they wanted to make it their own. I understand their point of view. For me going into it without having anything of my character written actually opened me up. I was able to make Daryl who I wanted to make him. Then again the writing was so good that I got a great sense of who he was very easily.

MG: You are no stranger to the genre but did this project differ in any way for you?
NR: I have done some horror things. I have worked with John Carpenter and Guillermo del Toro. I have also done a lot of serious drama. This definitely falls under serious drama. We are playing it for real. There are no zombies walking up shouting “BRAIIIINNNNSSSS”. It is not corny at all. There is one zombie in particular that Rick goes back to and puts out of its misery. It is one of the most sentimental parts of the whole pilot. I can say horror because it is zombies but it feels more like a large scale dramatic film. It really treats the zombification more like a disease than some surreal monster thing. It feels like there is an epidemic and real people are turning into zombie and not like people are coming back from the grave. You really get the human aspect of the zombies as well as how grotesque they look.

MG: Hopefully we will be seeing a Season 2, would you be returning if we do?
NR: Fuck yeah man, I am ready to fly to Atlanta right now and just wait on them. I am so into this. It is my favorite project I have ever done. I hope it goes on for ten years.

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Greg Nicotero is the creator of some of the Hollywood’s most memorable make-up and monsters of the last 25 years. Greg has worked on projects ranging from “Day of the Dead” to “Sin City” to “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” to “Piranha 3D”. Greg even took a shot at directing with his new short “The United Monster Talent Agency” (view short here), which is an eight-minute faux newsreel for a fictional Hollywood agency representing monsters from Universal Studios circa the 1950s. The short includes cameos by Frank Darabont, Robert Rodriguez, Eli Roth, Cerina Vincent, Dana Gould, Jeffery Combs and Derek Mears. So with AMC working on their first zombie television show, “The Walking Dead”, who else is better to bring on than Greg and his team. Movie Mikes has been long time friends with Greg and finally got him to sit down and chat about his recent work on “The Walking Dead” and his fantastic short film.

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Mike Gencarelli: Tell us about your most recent project, “The Walking Dead”?
Greg Nicotero: Frank Darabont and I had been talking about the show for quite a while.  I had met Robert Kirkman at ComicCon with Frank one year and Frank had always said that he was really, really dedicated to doing a zombie show but never found a story that he really thought could carry through…could make sense to him.  And this was years ago.  So lo and behold we’re having dinner in San Diego one night and he introduces me to Robert Kirkman.  He then whispers to me that he’s in negotiation to option the graphic novel to make a series out of it.  So needless to say I was very excited.  Frank and I have been fantastic friends and great collaborators even before “The Shawshank Redemption.”  We were friends long before he directed that.  I had actually recommended some make up artists on the East Coast to do the make up on “Shawshank.”  Then it looked like a small movie and he thought he might need to do a little aging on the guys.  And after that I did all of his films.  I worked on “The Green Mile” with him, as well as “The Majestic” and “The Mist.”  We’re kind of partners in crime so to speak.

MG: What was the biggest challenge of working on this show?
GN: I wanted the zombies to feel fresh.  I wanted them to feel new.  There are so many zombie movies out there.  75% of them are made for under a million dollars.  And they look like they’re made for under a million dollars!  This whole thing about pouring black ooze into their mouths and having them run ninety miles an hour…there’s nothing scary or interesting or compelling to me about that.  The whole issue of zombies that George Romero established…they’re just another version of society.  But instead of eating hamburgers or cheeseburgers or pizza they just happen to eat human flesh.  They’re not that tremendously different from the hundreds of thousands of people that walk through the streets texting on their phones and never looking up.  Except the zombies are not texting on their phones, they’re just shambling around.  And I think that people often get confused by why there are fast moving zombies and why are there slow moving zombies.  Fast moving zombies are purely a factor of people trying to reinvigorate a genre’.  By stealing the idea from “28 Days” and “Dawn of the Dead” they suddenly did that.  The way we portray our zombies on the show is that, yeah they’re kind of shambling and they are a little slow moving but they certainly can’t accelerate when food is around or when it’s necessary for them to feed.  Because these zombies can starve just like human beings can starve when they don’t get food.  And if they haven’t eaten they’re going to be weak.  And the idea of getting food is going to whip them up into a bit of a frenzy.  So Frank and I always referred to the sequence in the cemetery in the original “Night of the Living Dead.”  Bill Heintzman comes out from behind the mortuary…see’s Johnny and Barbara at the grave stone…he kind of shambles up to them.  But then he grabs Johnny and then it’s a wrestling match.  Then he chases Barbara when she gets in the car.  He chases her down the street to the farmhouse.  There is certainly more menace in that movie than people seem to remember.  Not just zombies walking really slowly.  And I think that’s really critical.  I’ve done dozens of zombie movies and I’ve worked with some of the best make up artists and some of the best directors in the world in regards to zombie stuff.  I’ve worked with George Romero.  Joe Dante.  Even Robert Rodriguez when he did “Planet Terror.”  Those were “zombie-ish” kinds of characters.  But every project that you do…every movie that you do…you think “oh man, I wish I would have tried this.  Next time I do a zombie movie I’m going to try THIS idea.”  Special effects make up and filmmaking…the process is so organic that it just grows.  There are times when you’re on set and you’re thinking on the fly “oh man, next time I want to do a prosthetic with dentures this way and teeth this way and give things a different look.”  A lot of it is casting, a lot of it was the artists’ sculptures, a lot of it was dental pieces and a lot of it was contact lenses.  It really was critical that we give these zombies a little bit of a different look…a little bit of a fresh look.  And having had the experience that I’ve had on all of these other movies really benefited the show.  Frank and I talked quite a bit about what the zombies would look like and what we could potentially do to make them feel a little original and a little bit different.  And when you get into “cattle call” days when there are 150 zombies and you’ve got seven different make up people and you’re blasting everybody through…those days it’s a little harder to get into your hero specific make ups but what we would do is pick and choose our battles.  On days when there were only 20 zombies we would do 20 hero zombie make ups on those guys.  But on the days when we had 150 zombies then we would break it up into hero make ups, mid ground make ups and background masks.

MG: What is your mind set when creating zombies for different projects?
GN: What excited me about “Walking Dead” was that Frank had…Frank is a classic director.  Frank is as “old” Hollywood as you can get.  It’s all character driven.  It’s all story driven.  There are issues and situations that will arise that we have seen in other zombie movies but they’re handled differently.  His treatment of his actors is just so spot on.  So few people really understand that, for real horror to work, you have to care about these people.  If you don’t care about them then it doesn’t matter what happens to them.  It’s the difference between walking down the street and seeing someone you went to high school with hurt versus seeing someone you don’t know hurt.  There’s a connection you need to make.  You want people to be sympathetic.  When you deal with the horror genre’ you invest in these characters.  It’s Janet Leigh in “Psycho.”  That’s probably the best example I can think of.  You go 25-30 minutes into the movie thinking she’s the lead character and then she gets killed off.  I always thought that was such a powerful moment and that is why that sequence still resonates fifty years later.  The audience didn’t see it coming and when it happened they were upset.

MG: How did the cast deal with all of the different make ups?
GN: The cast was just absolutely fascinating to watch work.  For us, the quality of the zombie make ups we were able to do for the show helped their performances.  It was one of those situations where they acted better because they were horrified by what we were doing.  Some of them literally had nightmares about zombies.  They spent a lot of time wanting to understand the process…wondering how they should react if someone they see is bitten and are going to potentially “come back.”  How do I gage that?  So I was really the resident zombie expert on set for the entire show.  That’s why Frank and Gale Anne Hurd gave me a consulting producer credit.  I was the resident zombie nerd that knew everything about zombies.

MG: Tell us about your new short film “United Monster Talent Agency”?
GN: I had been on the road for literally almost two years.  I was in Berlin on “Inglorious Basterds” and then from there I went on to “Book of Eli” and from “Book of Eli” I went on to “Piranha.”  And then from “Piranha” to “Predators.”  I had been jumping around all over the place and it got to the point where I finally got back to L.A. after having been with some of the most influential and important filmmakers in the world.  I looked at my schedule and realized I had about six weeks before I was due to start on “Walking Dead.”  So I told myself if I ever want to do this I’ve got to do it now.  So I called a bunch of my friends and told them I was going to direct this short.  I wrote it in about three hours.  I called Eli Roth, called Frank…I called my friends.  And I told them that I’d never asked a favor of anybody.  That’s not my style.  But I told them that this is my opportunity to do this…would you help me out?  And they were all on board.  I had originally talked to Tom Savini about playing Dracula and he was excited.  It took on a life of its own.

MG: How did you come up with the idea for the short?
GN: The original concept was a goofy idea…what if you see the Creature From the Black Lagoon and he’s running through the jungle…he’s chasing the girl.  The girl falls and puts her arms up.  Very dramatic.  You play up those 1950s “close up” moments.  And all of a sudden these guys run in with a net and in the background you see the Creature struggling and growling.  You pan over to a Rod Serling-type announcer who says “At Universal Studios, we strive for realism, blah blah blah.”  And you find out that Universal actually has all of these monsters living on their lot.  They just take them out occasionally to make movies with.  It was a simple, fun little idea. Then I thought “where do I go with it from here?”  I thought it would be funny to have a shot of King Kong sitting next to the facility and then once you get inside….I had originally imagined a series of holding pens…holding cells where they keep Dracula and Frankenstein and the Wolf Man.  I did a lot of research and watched a lot of news reels from the 50s.  Many of them were trumpeting the future…“Technology is our friend.  It’s here for all of us!  The world is at your fingertips.”  And I thought it would be funny if they had a place where they were developing technology for future movies. “Using science and technology to make bigger and better monsters for your future movies.”  And then it opened up.  And I realized that I could put all of my favorite movies…the ones I watched growing up…”Jaws”…”Dawn of the Dead.”  I could put the “Thing”…I could put Freddy Kruger’s hand in there.  It made complete sense.  So I called my friends and it really began taking shape.  There were a few days where I would think, “Holy shit!  What have I done?”  I had a little mini panic attack one week because I had never done this before.  I was literally entering uncharted territory.  It was terrifying and so exciting at the same moment.  I had one day where I was really nervous but then I thought, you know what, I’ve been doing this stuff for 25 years.  I’ve been on 800 movie sets.  There’s no way I can’t pull this off.  And I got my footing back.  I think everybody in this industry has that one moment where they think “did I really agree to do this?”  I scouted a location in Valencia…an old Borax factory.  I was looking for a place where I could have medical rooms.  This place had a huge lobby and then I thought, “Oh my God, I have another idea.”  Now it was a hustling, bustling agency.  So I took all of the classic movie posters that I own and hung them up on the walls and dressed everybody in period clothes.  And it just exploded.  And the fact that AMC has agreed to distribute the short…you can go on AMC’s web site under “Fear Fest” and “Short Films” and see it.  It’s really exploded on the Internet.  It’s played at film festivals all over the world…it’s played in Ireland…Spain…Australia.  All of a sudden it went from “Hey, I’ve got six weeks free…let’s make a film for shits and giggles.”  Now people all over the world are seeing it.  It’s truly the weirdest.  And to get emails from Guillermo del Toro and Rick Baker telling me how much they loved it…John Landis….guys that I’ve looked up to and admired.  And of course it’s nerd heaven.  Who else can say that they’ve directed a scene from “Creature From the Black Lagoon?”  I had period movie cameras and period clothing with a set we had built at K.N.B….it was the closet any of us could get to being there without really being able to say “we were there.”  We built everything.  Not one shot of the creatures is stock footage.  I licensed four shots of stock footage, but they were just of Hollywood.  When you see Hollywood Boulevard or when you see June Allyson signing autographs…I licensed those clips because I wanted the short to have that “feel.”  Originally I wasn’t going to do it but then I thought “you know, I want it to feel like a newsreel.  I want it to feel like “dateline:  Hollywood…1954.” I wanted it to have that cadence to it.  When you see the “Nosferatu” shot…people are asking me “did you take that from the movie?”  And I say, “no, no, no I shot that here at K.N.B.  And then they ask me “how did you do King Kong?”  King Kong was a miniature we had built and King Kong was the exact same size as the original stop motion armature and we rod-puppeted him to give him that classic, stuttery stop motion feel.  I tried to be as authentic as I could with all the monsters.  Because I felt that if you didn’t think you were watching the real monsters it wouldn’t work.  A lot of the characters were played by my make up artist friends.  Many of them not only played a monster but helped with other make up.  They all did double duty.  I think it was something people didn’t really expect from me  It has charm and character and personality.  It’s not very gory…not a lot of exploitation or a lot of blood.  But I wanted to have fun with it.  I wanted it to have personality.

MG: Any plans for any more directing projects?
GN: I would love to.  I directed 2nd Unit on “The Walking Dead.”  And I’ve also been doing a lot of directing on “Vampire Diaries.”  It’s exciting that I’m getting calls.

MG: What films are upcoming for K.N.B. EFX?
GN: We just did the movie “I Am Number Four”, directed by D.J. Caruso.  We have worked with him on “Eagle Eye”, “Disturbia” and a few others also. There’s a movie called “Priest” coming out that we did all of the make up effects for.  We did “Fright Night” with Colin Farrell.  We’re certainly keeping busy.

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Robert Kirkman is the creator of the comic book series “The Walking Dead”.  He has also worked on other comic series such as “Invincible” and “Marvel Zombie” series.  “The Walking Dead” is currently heading to the screen screen on AMC, Kirkman is serving as writer on the show.  Movie Mikes had a chance to talk with Robert and discuss his work on “Walking Dead” and his find out what his favorite comic series is.

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Mike Gencarelli: Tell us about the process of bringing “The Walking Dead” from comic book to the small screen?
Robert Kirkman: From my point of view it’s really quite simple.  You find a great network like AMC and an excellent director like Frank Darabont, a great producer like Gale Anne Hurd, add a great writing team and go from there.  To be honest I really haven’t had to do all that much, which is awesome because everybody involved are top of the line. Knowing that it’s going to be on TV. is pretty crazy, because there is some cool stuff that happens that you wouldn’t expect to see on television.  I’m pretty excited about that.  It’s been an amazing experience.

MG: Do you feel that because it is on television, and not a feature film, that it is better or worse?
RK: It’s better because with a movie you’re not trying to cram 77 issues of a comic book into a two hour movie.  I think that everyone involved….Frank, the actors, AMC…are thinking that this project is going to be very long term.  They plan for the show to run for a good long time.  Because of that the first six episodes really doesn’t cover all that much.  We’re allowed to take our time with it, not cram too much in, and that’s great.  Another thing I’m excited about is that the show isn’t following the comic too closely.  I mean, there are a lot of big moments in the comic that people will expect to make it to the TV show, but you don’t want the show to be boring.  Part of the joy to fans of the comic book is that they never know what to expect.  Anyone can die at any moment.  There is really a shock value to the whole thing where you really don’t expect certain things to happen.  I think for the television show to run along the same story line as the comic, for the fans of the comic I think that would really be boring.  Because they would know what happens next. I think it’s great that the writers have taken liberties with the story line and followed some new paths that I may have glossed over.  Frank and the writers have gone in and expected things that I covered very quickly.  They’ve added new characters and, therefore, new story lines for those characters.  There is going to be a lot of stuff that the comic book fans
aren’t going to expect.  I think it will be a real cool experience for all involved.

MG: Do you ever see an end for the comic series in sight?
RK: Every story has to end at some point…I don’t plan on living forever (laughs).  I won’t be writing this book until the day I die so I will have to end it sometime.  But not in the near future….not in the far future….if I have my way.  It’s the zombie movie that never ends, so to fulfill that I think it needs to go on for a long time.  I’m still as excited writing issue #80 as I was writing issue #1.  And as long as it’s like that I’m going to keep going forever and ever!  I can see it reaching issue #300…I can see it reaching issue #400.  I definitely plan for it to go for a good long time.

MG: Do you have any other comics that you would like to adapt as well?
RK: I would love to see ALL of my comics adapted to this format.  Television is a perfect format for comic books.  Comics tell a long form narrative that continues from month to month.  And I think more people will be by passing movies and turning comics into television shows because it’s a much more natural fit.  You get the same kind of experience from a television series as you do from a comic book.  I think “The Walking Dead” will show people how well that translates.

MG: Besides, “The Walking Dead”, what is your favorite comic series you have worked on?
RK: I have a superhero series called “Invincible” that I have a lot of fun with.  It’s been running as long as “The Walking Dead.”  I’d love to see that turned into a television series.

MG: Now for a hard one: what is your favorite comic series of all time?
RK: That’s surprisingly an easy one.  My favorite comic book of all time is “The Savage Dragon.”  A series that started publishing in 1992.  It was my favorite comic when I was younger and it’s really everything you could ever want out of a comic book.  There’s a lot of drama…a lot of emotional stories…great character bits.  And on top of that there’s the kind
of action you can only get out of a comic.  There are things that really can’t exist in any other art form in that comic. I highly recommend to anyone to go out there and pick it up.  They won’t be disappointed.

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